Advancements in wireless communication technology have greatly increased the versatility of today's wireless communication devices. These advancements have enabled wireless communication devices to evolve from simple mobile telephones and pagers into sophisticated computing devices capable of a wide variety of functionality such as multimedia recording and playback, event scheduling, word processing, e-commerce, etc. As a result, users of today's wireless communication devices are able to perform a wide range of tasks from a single, portable device that conventionally required either multiple devices or larger, non-portable equipment.
Various mobile device applications, such as navigation aids, business directories, local news and weather services, or the like, leverage knowledge of the position of the device. In applications that utilize inertial navigation, motion sensors such as accelerometers or gyroscopes are employed to ascertain the position of the device. Accelerometers and gyroscopes output data corresponding to linear acceleration and angular turn rate, respectively, in relation to a monitored device. In some applications, these data are integrated prior to further processing, e.g., to compute velocity from accelerometer data or turn angle from gyroscope data. Integration of motion sensor data typically involves the reading and processing of data from the motion sensors at a substantially high rate (e.g., 100 Hz), increasing processor power consumption and inter-integrated circuit (I2C) bus load.